Newly Entitled Indians

FIRST, THE GOOD NEWS: India became Thailand’s second-largest international market by air passengers in June and July this year. It leapfrogged over Japan, Hong Kong, Singapore and Malaysia from sixth to second position. Only China sends more tourists to Thailand.

The bad news: incidents of rude behaviour by Indian holidaymakers have gone viral. Much the same story is being repeated in Vietnam and elsewhere: Indian tourists talking loudly, arguing with shopkeepers for discounts, and passing lewd remarks at local women.

Over 30 million Indians are expected to travel overseas in 2025. By 2030, that figure is estimated to climb to 50 million, making Indian tourists the world’s second-largest international travellers after the Chinese.

A rapidly expanding middle class is driving the surge. Many are first-time international travellers. In India, men call the shots in joint families. New affluence strengthens their sense of entitlement. In smaller cities and towns, they are used to being waited on hand and foot.

The newly rich Indian passenger aboard an international flight thinks nothing of carrying on a loud conversation with relatives seated several aisles away. That’s how they do it at home, with cousins, uncles, nephews, even neighbours.

Why does all this matter? India will soon become one of the few countries to have two twin-airport cities. In Mumbai, the Navi Mumbai International Airport (NMIA) is set to begin operations in October 2025. It will have a passenger capacity of 20 million initially but will rise to 90 million by 2030. Along with Mumbai’s Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj International Airport (CSMIA), which has a capacity of 55 million passengers, the twin Mumbai airports will cater to 145 million passengers this decade. Connectivity between the two airports is through sealinks, Metro rail, roads and the 21.8km Atal Setu bridge.

In Delhi’s National Capital Region (NCR), meanwhile, the Noida International Airport (NIA) in Jewar will begin operations later this year, catering to over 70 million passengers once all phases are completed.

The two megacities, Mumbai and Delhi, will therefore have between them a capacity of over 300 million passengers—145 million in Mumbai’s MMR and 160 million Delhi’s NCR.

All developing societies pass through three stages.

First, there is the old entitled elite sophisticated enough to not throw its weight around. In the second stage, a successful professional class emerges, bred on foreign universities and aware of accepted travel etiquette. Finally, in the third stage comes the upper middle class, thrilled with its new affluence but culturally rooted to India.

China and South Korea went through the same three phases. The 2018 film Crazy Rich Asians was a sympathetic look at how newly rich East Asians interact cross-culturally with the West, splurge at foreign hotels, buy up everything at malls and are generally over the top.

The Western approach to ‘suddenly rich’ Indians is strikingly different. Racism infects the narrative. In Asia, there is stoic resignation for occasional bad behaviour by Indian tourists. Thailand, Vietnam and other East Asian countries welcome Indian tourist money and have eased visa requirements.

In sharp contrast, the West has raised the bar. US President Donald Trump’s racist MAGA supporters routinely post hate-filled invectives against anything Indian. Indians, they say, are taking their jobs, cooking smelly curry, and there are just too many of them.

The envy is palpable. In the US, five million Indians have the highest average family income of any demographic ($155,000), more than double the average household income of US whites ($72,000).

Most Indians don’t fit in culturally with Western society: they’d rather spend weekends visiting Indian relatives living close by than going trekking, river rafting or binge drinkng.

America was always a deeply racist country. It was founded on European racism to justify occupying Native American land and pushing indigenous Americans into impoverished, isolated Reservations. Meanwhile, African slaves, shipped across the Atlantic on a hellish 60-day journey, worked in cotton plantations and helped build the US economy.

The anti-Indian sentiment has percolated up to US lawmakers with Lindsey Graham threatening to punish India and China with 100 per cent trade tariffs for buying Russian oil. Graham, like other European-descended Americans, lives on ‘RedIndian’ land. Indians, the real ones, live on their own land. Graham and other Americans know this but hope Indians, entitled or not, never remind them.

affluenceflyingIndian middle classinternational travellersoverseas travelsense of entitlement